Sherlock Holmes Is 'Not Straight' Says Show’s Creator

Photo from the BBC

The acclaimed BBC series Sherlock will be returning for its highly anticipated fourth season in 2016. While that's still quite a ways off, the show's notoriously secretive creator, Steven Moffat, who is also the show-runner for Doctor Who, gave an uncharacteristically frank interview with Entertainment Weekly last week about what the future holds for our favorite socially inept detective. This week, however, he took the opportunity today to set one very important thing clear: Sherlock Holmes is not gay, but then he's not straight either.

Last December, Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock, hinted at the fact that his character might be gay. In an interview with Chris Hardwick, Cumberbatch contrasted Sherlock with The Doctor by saying that, among other things, they have "different tastes in the sex of their partners." While this could have been in reference to their companions--The Doctor often works with women, such as Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), while Sherlock teams up with John Watson (Martin Freeman)--fans were very happy to construe his comment in terms of sexuality.

Sherlock's nebulous sexuality is something that the show often has fun with (see photo above) but, according to Moffat in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Sherlock isn't interested in sex at all:

"We walk into that one all the time. It's a funny thing when a character for over 100 years has been saying, 'I don't do that at all.' He's been saying it over 100 years! He's not interested in [sex]. He's willfully staying away from that to keep his brain pure--a Victorian belief, that. But everyone wants to believe he's gay. He's not gay. He's not straight. And Doctor Watson is very clear that he prefers women. People want to fantasize about it. It's fine. But it's not in the show."

It's unclear how much Cumberbatch agrees with that, however. Speaking with IndieWire in 2012, he said:

"I see no reason at all why he shouldn't be sexual. Everyone recruited him to their perspective, their interpretation... I've had asexuals come up to me and thank me for representing asexuals. I don't know how that came about. I mean, the man's too busy to have sex. That's really what it is."

While we may never know the truth, it sure is fun imagining all the possibilities.